1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to exposure apparatus and making methods of the apparatus, and more particularly to an exposure apparatus that forms a pattern by exposing a substrate and a making method of the apparatus.
2. Description of the Background Art
In a lithography process for manufacturing microdevices (electronic devices) such as a semiconductor, a liquid crystal display device or the like, various types of exposure apparatus including a projection exposure apparatus such as a stepper or a scanning stepper have been conventionally used.
In the conventional exposure apparatus, a projection optical system, a reticle stage system, a wafer stage system and the like were sequentially assembled into a frame mechanism. This caused an inconvenience of requiring time for starting up the exposure apparatus (assembly adjustment), maintenance and the like, since the reticle stage system and the like also had to be detached from the frame mechanism when taking out the projection exposure apparatus to perform adjustment.
Therefore, in order to improve such an inconvenience, the applicant of the present invention has made a proposal of an exposure apparatus that can be assembled and adjusted easily and quickly (refer to Kokai (Japanese Patent Unexamined Application Publication) No. 2001-291663) by employing a module configuration for both a first stage chamber in which a first stage system which moves holding a first object (a reticle) is housed and is also detachably attached to a frame mechanism and a second stage chamber in which a second stage system which moves holding a second object (a wafer) is housed and is also detachably attached to the frame mechanism, and attaching each of the stage chambers to the frame mechanism, for example, after assembling both the first and second stage chambers in parallel.
However, integration of semiconductor devices is becoming higher and higher by generation, and in order to cope with this, the exposure apparatus disclosed in the above Kokai (Japanese Patent Unexamined Application Publication) No. 2001-291663 is also developed for each generation. As a consequence, when the generation changes, the frame mechanism also has to change, which caused an inconvenience of not being able to use the module of the previous generation.